


The Seer's Eye

by grossferatu



Category: Homestuck, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Consent Issues, Dysphoria, The Homestuck Epilogues, The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 01:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21438295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grossferatu/pseuds/grossferatu
Summary: Elias Bouchard is an interfering bastard, and the Seer's Eye opens wide.Or, Rose Lalonde is now very,veryaware of what Dirk has been doing to her, and why exactly she's in a robot body.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde & Dirk Strider
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	The Seer's Eye

**Author's Note:**

> This idea wouldn't let me go!
> 
> forgive the formatting weird. just... i have spent enough time wrestling with html to know that I am not doing this again in the next chapter!

I think what really gets to me in the end is that this was not difficult at all. I know I’m setting myself up to be the villain in all of this, what with the kidnapping and splitting up of fan-favorite ships et al (you’ve been a bad boy, Dirk Strider, thirty lashes for you), but ultimately it didn’t take that much in the way of effort to do.  
Well, there was the whole business with Calliope, but that’s what I deserve for not predicting that a Muse of Time would screw everything up.  
They were not very nice to me, but that’s what I deserve after all.  
In the end, all it took was selling my soul.  
I originally thought that the whole idea of my having a soul was a bit much; this is my Ultimate Self, after all, and therefore am I not an amalgamation of a trillion infinity of souls, each splinter containing in itself an entire lifetime of hijinks and fuck ups?  
The entity in question apparently calls itself, or is called by some other cultists, the Mother of Puppets, but it presented itself to me as a large Spider. This is more my dear beloved daughter’s aesthetic, but beggars cannot be choosers when it comes to eldritch entities, especially when the native horrorterrors do not appear to be returning my (metaphorical) calls.  
My powers as an ascendant Prince of Heart are already quite vast, of course, as can be demonstrated by my firm control on the narrative as it currently stands, but I am not so arrogant as to refuse help from so helpful a creature. I don’t need a soul, anyway (and could probably build myself another one? Something to work on at another time), and the increased ability to move everybody about the battlefield like the player in Dragon Age is quite useful.

ROSEBOT: Hello, Dirk Strider.

Now this is odd! My daughter is not in the habit of addressing me by my full name— why would she, we are so in sync? —and there is something… off… about her that I cannot quite place.

ROSEBOT: I am not usually so direct, but I find the idea of an avatar of the Stranger gaining any more power in this tale… unpleasant.  
ROSEBOT: Forgive my rudeness, but I have become rather nosy ever since I gained what I wanted most dearly in the world, and ever since I let all of our… friends… in the access point at Hilltop Road has become a sort of peephole into other worlds.  
ROSEBOT: It’s the least your universe deserves, considering I was so rudely killed in it.

  


DIRK: I’m sorry, but who the fuck are you?

  


ROSEBOT: You may call me Elias. It is not my original name, but it will suffice for these sorts of discussions. I must congratulate you. You have made Rose quite open to my influence; I have not even had to take her eyes.

  


DIRK: Get the fuck out of my daughter.

  


ROSEBOT: I am genuinely fascinated by your outrage. It is this not what you have been doing to her for years? I intend to leave her more or less as I found her upon my departure. You have not ceased tinkering with her thoughts, perspectives, impressions. At least the other Seer on this vessel knows what you do to her.

  


DIRK: That’s different.

I make my way towards the part of the ship where I last saw my daughter, avoiding traps left by my pratfall enthused trollish shipmate.

ROSEBOT: Is it?

DIRK: Shut. Up.

ROSEBOT: You will not be pleased upon my departure.

ROSEBOT: Heh. Heheheh.

Rose is sitting up in her chair when I find her. She’s a robot, so her expression is usually pretty blank, but it’s even blanker than usual.

ROSEBOT: Look at me, Dirk.

  


DIRK: I swear to—look I swear to something I’m going to get him out of your head, just wait.

  


ROSEBOT: What, precisely, are you supposed to be removing from my thoughts? Your own influence? I highly doubt you would do so willingly, but don’t worry. My thoughts are clearer than they have been in a long time.

Shit. _Shit._ Rose looks up as though from a long sleep. She’s been recharging after some modifications she asked me to do on her chassis, and as a consequence her neural patterns are still a bit muddled. She’s happy—  
She’s happy—

Why don’t you begin by explaining what exactly you’ve been doing to me?

Oh no. Absolutely not. I’ve already been through this again with that fucking Cherub you are not doing this to me Rose. Do you hear me? You are not doing this to me.  
Your name is ROSE LALONDE, you are SOME UNCOUNTABLE NUMBER OF YEARS old and you are rather pleased with your situation.  
This has to work. This has always worked. I’m the Prince of Heart, for fuck’s sake, my whole deal is narrative control. You cannot take this away from me.  
Rose laughs. The sound is less mechanical than it should be, and then she stands up, walking towards me with quick, efficient steps.  
“This isn’t going to go the way you want,” she says. “You really should have just answered my question.”  
When she reaches me, she kisses my cheek. I don’t flinch. How do I have this little control over my situation, I’m still the narrator why can’t I do anything about her wrapping her cold hand around my throat and—

Your name is Dirk Strider. You are in a robot. What’s fascinating is that until recently this robot was the one you very kindly made for your ‘daughter,’ Rose Lalonde, who it turns out is rather unhappy about what you have done regarding her relationship with her wife.  
“I suppose it is of some comfort that your intentions were for them to chase after us. Rather a daring rescue, do you not think?”  
You lift your head, trying desperately to get your bearings in this new form. Giving your daughter’s robotic body breasts had seemed like a hilariously ironic bit of pseudo-incest at the time, but now that your consciousness is wearing them you become acutely aware of a hitherto foreign to you concept: bodily dysphoria.  
Rose smiles grimly at you, an expression your face would never use.  
“This is not ideal,” she says, “but that body you made for me was deliberately engineered to make me more passive, and I am rather fed up with that aspect of my aspect.” She winces at the repeated word. She may not be the Lalonde that writes fiction, but she is still a student of grammatical conventions. It is something to cling to in a world that operates on bullshit rules created by some guy who didn’t actually plan out his monster epic from the beginning.  
“Hey,” you say softly. “Some of the rules are kind of interesting.”  
Right. Of course! You have spent a frankly astonishing amount of your time contemplating the narrative/temporal/canonical consequences the cobbled together nature of sBurb/sGrub have for your life, enough that you have become absurdly invested in this whole situation.  
“All of that is unimportant for the moment,” Rose says. “For the moment, we have more pressing concerns than your obsession with the narrative relevance of our friends. If it makes you feel any better, the coming conflict will guarantee that. Now, shall we try again?”  
You stare at her in genuine confusion. Her thoughts are still as open to you as ever, but they are bright in a way that hurts like staring at the green sun. You have the feeling that when you look at her thoughts, they look at you, and something is feeding on your unease.  
“What do you mean?”  
You’re still thinking about those breasts. They were supposed to be funny, but you’re a gay man, and like Michelangelo before you, you constructed breasts by pasting two awkward lumps on a torso in a way that feels perpetually awkward. It really is quite uncomfortable, you think, and it makes you wonder how Rose felt, trapped in this body and unable to express any discomfort because of all the effort you expended making her feel grateful for all the favors you did for her.  
“I get it, I get it,” you say. “I genuinely don’t know what you mean.”  
“Why don’t you begin by explaining what you’ve been doing to me?”  
Rose looks calm again. She has taken off your shades, forcing you to stare at your eyes. You don’t like this at all.  
“I just wanted to guide you through your ascendance,” you say. “I’m the only one who would understand, and if you had just wasted away to irrelevance…” You make a frustrated noise. “You’re the Seer of Light, Rose. Your whole thing is you know too much, and it was killing you.”  
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she says. Is it just you, or is there a third eye in the hollow of her throat? “Now, I have had some help, same as you, and what I See…” she shivers with pleasure. “What I See gives me strength.”  
“I don’t understand,” you say. This is a lie. You understand. You understand all too well that the masks you hide behind have begun to crumble. Eyes open in the air around Rose’s head, and you sit transfixed in your robot body as her gaze falls upon you completely, a halo of purple more beautiful and more terrible than even her grimdark days, something you never quite witnessed yourself.  
You understand that your deal with the Mother of Puppets is not at all when you lost whatever is the multidimensional equivalent to a soul. You do not desire control, and the lack of it is not what you fear the most.  
What you fear the most in all the worlds, in all the timelines, is the full weight of criticism stripped of your terrible, self-justifying self-loathing turned on you. You are…  
You are a doll.  
“Why didn’t you tell me you were planning on dragging in a god of mannequins and circus music?” Rose asks. “That sounds much more like that clown’s thing.”  
You shudder. Unlike Rose, it is as far from a shudder of pleasure as a shudder can be. “I’m not…”  
She continues to stare at you.  
You remember.  
Oh, gods, do you remember.  
Rose chuckles. “As much as I appreciate second person,” she says. “I think first person will be more appropriate for this next bit.”  
You hear what sounds like a tape recorder turning on.


End file.
